Area Effect Weaponry-Mortars, Artillery, Flame Throwers.

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eniviousjohn: "So please, please, for the love of all things scantily clad and 40% alcohol by volume, just shoot the guns for yourselves. If you're having trouble choosing between which super expensive mega-awesome new paintball marker to choose from, are you really even having a problem to begin with?

Orginally posted by someone else:
Come to my house and try to take my guns.
I came into this world screaming and covered in someone else's blood.
I don't mind going out the same way.

hello, and thank you OP for this thread...ive often wondered if I was the only crazy person on this earth who had considered the effects the introduction of indirect fire artillery would have on the game of paintball in scenario or big game settings. Sorry for my loooong post, ive spent a good deal of time thinking about this subject and i just wanted to weigh in on the subject too!

As aan ameatur student of military history if often found myself reading about the massed use of the "queen of the battlefield" during world war II, particularly in regards to the soviet unions use of massed regiments of artillery to litterally blast holes in enemy lines and thought, what if during a good sized (maybe 300-400 pplish?) game, you had a 2 or 3 gun battery on each team for indirect fire support? obv due to the devestating effect such an asset could wreak, there would have to be limitations to its use, probably beyond just the limitations imposed by the expense of the ammo itself. I would say maybe something as simple as the battery can only be used once every thirty minutes (or some measurable amount of time) leaving it up to the commander to decide when and where to use this valuable asset.....now obv. two three gun batteries would be....a lot, frankly, but you could achieve the same effect with one gun firing more rounds.

All that being said, (and id love to discuss the implications, limitations, etc of all of this anytime further) ive actually done some testing/experimentation with some friends and heres what we found.
the first time (with an assist from a case of same adams) we attempted to fire about 30 PBs from a potato gun, using newspaper as wading, much like in a muzzleloader. Beer, with its wonderful ability to make one feel all warm and fuzzy inside, also degrades ones ability to think rationally, and a spud gun using hairspray as propellant, with a wad of paper jammed inside the bareel and paint on top of it, generally makes a large, burning, smoking mess.....that led me to thinking that an air mortar using a paper mache sabot cup to hold the paint in place might work....the cup would take the brunt of the air blast during the launch, and would either fall way quickly due to its lightweight, or disintegrate as it was exiting the barrel. I think. Ive tried it a couple of times with my spud gun with fairly mixed results. It works, but half the time i get a lot of broken balls. I think this is due to either their being a greater amount of force created by igniting hairspray and other volatile, explosive household elements as a propellant, or the fact that the sabot rounds are often exiting the barrel in a smoking, smoldering mass.

IDK, just my 6.57 cents worth. Sorry i wrote a book, hope it adds to the convo.

__________________DIRTYWATERCREWBOSTON ARMADA
RIP MX658....YOU WILL BE MISSEDWHEN ALL ELSE FAILS....KILL EVERYONEmatty mace: i have asthma an i felt as though other players might have been intentionally smoking near my pit to hinder my performance.......good thing i had my puffer.CLOSED BOLT BALLERS

Like most things in combat mass is the way to go. Whether tanks, arty or firepower mass at the point of attack. When you spread it out you are just weaker everywhere.

But I feel paintballoons are the way for arty to work. As Blackangel points out PBs don't break, grenades are too heavy and nerfs require too much ref involvement.
2" tubes are like 60mm mortars. Helps but not much bang. 3" and 4" are the answer. I haven't done the work up but a 4" tube with several smaller balloons will cover a larger area than a single larger balloon. Just not sure how accurate it will be. New to the whole air cannon thing so no time to work it out.
Also need to have the right terrain. Need a more open area. Now tree bursts are great- as long as it's over the enemy not over your position!

I have been playing around with a new barrel design for my ongoing artillery project. Its been a work in progress for a year now. I took a 5 foot piece of 2 1/2 inch pvc conduit and put 5 5 foot pieces of 3/4 inch cpvc in it with pins in the back to keep pb's from rolling through, then sealed them in with spray foam and silicone caulk. Surprisingly 3/4 inch cpvc makes a good paint to barrel match. At 60 psi and roughly a 50 to 60 degree angle i was able to get 25 pb's around 100 yards down range in a nice 15 foot pattern. Most of the pb's broke on impact.

5 balls per barrel. No problem breaking paint? Probably the LONG barrel and low operating pressure makes it work by just having the air input going into the back end.... With my short sabot STKT round in a RPG, they would break.

So it DOES work around 100 yards and the vast majority of the balls stay intact. How consistent is it shot to shot to land in the same area. Would you be able to "Walk" the artillery implact point right onto a open topped bunker at 100 yards?

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Carefully planned irresponsibility is the KEY to mental health.

I did not get one barrel break and tested it a dozen times, with a couple different color sets of balls. All the shots landed in an area of maby 50ish feet. While i was doing the test fires i had the barrel just placed into the launcher. The barrel tended to pop out on the fire. I am working on a locking system to keep the barrel in this may increase the distance of the shot.

depends on whos view you take regarding the "queen of the battlefield"...but that's semantical...found a 3 inch butterfly valve...gonna try that and a 4 inch tube and see what happens

__________________DIRTYWATERCREWBOSTON ARMADA
RIP MX658....YOU WILL BE MISSEDWHEN ALL ELSE FAILS....KILL EVERYONEmatty mace: i have asthma an i felt as though other players might have been intentionally smoking near my pit to hinder my performance.......good thing i had my puffer.CLOSED BOLT BALLERS

__________________DIRTYWATERCREWBOSTON ARMADA
RIP MX658....YOU WILL BE MISSEDWHEN ALL ELSE FAILS....KILL EVERYONEmatty mace: i have asthma an i felt as though other players might have been intentionally smoking near my pit to hinder my performance.......good thing i had my puffer.CLOSED BOLT BALLERS

Yes 3\4 pipe. Once you pull the cotter pin they work great. The problem is whe you are running around with them. The ring starts to work itself loose, and you BLOW your self up.LOL. The next batch i will place a BB on the inside tube,just before the cotter pin. They say that will keep the ring from slipping off. We will see.

those are sweet! im assuming its no too difficult, but is it a messy process? the wife def. doesn't want the kitchen ever looking like it did again after my last "PB related experiment" when horribly awry...

__________________DIRTYWATERCREWBOSTON ARMADA
RIP MX658....YOU WILL BE MISSEDWHEN ALL ELSE FAILS....KILL EVERYONEmatty mace: i have asthma an i felt as though other players might have been intentionally smoking near my pit to hinder my performance.......good thing i had my puffer.CLOSED BOLT BALLERS

Its actually very easy. Get your self a bucket. I used a pressurized plastic sprayer that you can get from HomeDepot/Lowes. Fill it with kids washable paint. (not to thick) It will clog the nozzle. Then there are easy to fill. I found the recipe on YOUTUBE. On this video towards the end, the guy really does a great job on you how to make them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAHm3dwpCh8

A while back, I started making a grape-shot/canister rounds with the peat pots used for starting plants. Cheap, light and biodegradable, The tricky part was making a jig to cut them cleanly so they have a 2" diameter. Easy to pre-load and yields a pretty consistent pattern for direct or indirect fire:

I stumbled across something else yesterday that might interest some of you guys. It was at Bed, Bath and Beyond for $10:

It can used to fill water balloons, too, and it looked like something worth experimenting with as part of another hair-brained scheme I'm working on.

To be honest, I am starting to move way from the cannonball model of indirect fire, and have started a project more like the effect of cluster munitions. If you think about it, indirect fire requires very consistent projectile velocities and known ballistics values. So what is the best way to deliver a rain of 50 tightly grouped paintballs on a pre-selected target at the highest possible velocity?

I hope to have it ready to use it as part of our defense at EMR Spring Castle, so I encourage everyone to come and see it's effects up close.

To keep grenades from kill you I carry then in a pod. two in a 140 rd and one in a 100 rd. I use a paperclip as the pull pin. One they are cheaper and can lock in. I never had one go off on me, but I have seen it happen and it just fills up the pod, not you.

Great place for building a flamethrower info. It's basically how to build a super soaker. But lots of info on how to design, built and how and why not something work/ don't work. Got a lot of ideas and links on where to buy.

For artillery rounds, would moulding a sabot out of paper machet work? Something to come apart down the length once it exits the barrel but leaves the cluster of 3" balloons to take flight? I'm thinking like a 2 liter bottle with a line of 5 or 6 balloons. Launch it, the sabot separates and the balloons leave evenly spaced.